WHICH CLOUD PROVIDER IS RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

By Business Development Manager - Christos Pavlou

11/05/2017

The cloud has transformed how businesses use IT, with consumption-based resources and services that can scale up or down as needed. That’s nothing new. You already know a move to the cloud makes sense, but navigating through cloud providers is difficult—that’s why we’ve done the grunt work for you.

At Kiandra, we go through a rigorous process when we test potential technologies to support and roll out, and it’s no surprise to us that Azure is rapidly gaining traction as THE cloud infrastructure of choice. In fact, according to the RightScale 2017 State Of The Cloud Report, Microsoft Azure adoption surged from 26% to 43% in enterprises.
When it comes to cloud, Azure makes sense and here are our top five reasons why:

Security

If you follow Kiandra on social media or regularly read this blog, you’ll know we’re a security conscious organisation! Our focus on security drives all of our engagements. Our security specialists love the challenge of ensuring everything we do is backed by the very latest in security methodologies and best practice. So, when it comes to recommending a cloud platform, security is one of the biggest prerequisites. Azure offers enterprise-level security. No matter what the size of your organisation, your applications and data are getting the same level of protection chosen by Microsoft’s enterprise customers, including many of the world’s largest financial institutions. Azure provides a fully managed and monitored infrastructure, with data backed up in multiple geographies, along with a range of security measures like patch management, security monitoring, and cryptographic protection of messages. This gets our tick of approval.

Flexibility

For many midsize businesses, it isn’t practical if the cloud is an “all or none” proposition. You need the flexibility to run some applications on-premises, while moving others to the cloud when it makes sense. Microsoft is the only vendor that offers a consistent technology platform whether you are running servers on-site or migrating your workloads to the cloud. This is an important factor for us, as it means we can make this “hybrid” IT approach easy and seamless for your organisation. So whether you are testing the cloud for the first time, or going “all-in”, we can make it happen.

Integration

Most of our clients are reliant on Microsoft tools like Office 365 and Outlook, so a cloud platform that seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products is a no-brainer for us (and you)! Organisations can also use the same virtual machines in Azure that they use on-premises, like Windows and Linux, which further simplifies operations.

Backup

Effective data backup often requires significant capital investment in hardware and backup media. Azure backup provides a simple, reliable, cost-effective option for backing up your data to the cloud. We love it! Your backups are encrypted and protected in offsite cloud storage, adding a layer of protection in case data loss or disaster impacts your servers. It works with any apps and data you have, including file servers, SharePoint Server, SQL Server, Exchange, and more. You avoid the infrastructure investment associated with storage, enabling you to pay only for the amount you use.

Reliability

We trust Azure, but if that isn’t enough to convince you, 90% of Fortune 500 companies also trust Azure, and with 99.95% availability and 24/7 tech support and health monitoring, it’s pretty clear why. Azure also has the most comprehensive list of compliance certifications of any hyper-scale cloud provider and the industry-leading capabilities to meet the needs of key compliance requirements.

You know what your organisational goals are, and Kiandra knows cloud. If you’d like to chat to one of our cloud experts about migrating to Azure please get in touch on 03 9691 0500 or email christos.pavlou@kiandra.com.au. We’d love to take you there!